ated. During the
negotiations in London, interrupted in January, and resumed in the spring
of 1913 after the fall of Adrianople, it was soon made clear that in spite
of all these magniloquent declarations nothing would be as it had been
before. Throughout the winter Austria-Hungary had been mobilizing troops
and massing them along the frontiers of Serbia and Montenegro, any
increase in the size of which countries meant a crushing blow to the
designs of the Germanic powers and the end to all the dreams embodied in
the phrase 'Drang nach Osten' ('pushing eastwards').

In the spring of 1913 Serbia and Montenegro, instead of being defeated by
the brave Turks, as had been confidently predicted in Vienna and Berlin
would be the case, found themselves in possession of the _sandjak_ of
Novi-Pazar, of northern and central Macedonia (including Old Serbia), and
of the northern half of Albania. The presence of Serbian troops on the
shore of the Adriatic was more than Austria could stand, and at the
renewed conference of London it was decided that they must retire. In the
interests of nationality, in which the Balkan States themselves undertook
the war, it was desirable that at any rate an attempt should be made to
create an independent state of Albania, though no one who knew the local
conditions felt confident as to its ultimate career. Its creation assuaged
the consciences of the Liberal Government in Great Britain and at the same
time admirably suited the strategic plans of Austria-Hungary. It left that
country a loophole for future diplomatic efforts to disturb the peace of
south-eastern Europe, and, with its own army in Bosnia and its political
agents and irregular troops in Albania, Serbia and Montenegro, even though
enlarged as it was generally recognized they must be, would be held in a
vice and could be threatened and bullied from the south now as well as
from the north whenever it was in the interests of Vienna and Budapest to
apply the screw. The independence of Albania was declared at the
conference of London on May 30, 1913. Scutari was included in it as being
a purely Albanian town, and King Nicholas and his army, after enjoying its
coveted flesh-pots for a few halcyon weeks, had, to their mortification,
to retire to the barren fastnesses of the Black Mountain. Serbia,
frustrated by Austria in its attempts, generally recognized as legitimate,
to obtain even a commercial outlet on the Adriatic, naturally again
diverted